Interview with Michelle Martins from Money 89.3fm: Some Elaboration

I am grateful to the interview given by Michelle of Money 89.3fm on my book.

I am the first Singapore author in Singapore to touch on the subject of Blockchain using economic and historic lens.

The interview can be seen on this URL:

I told Michelle beforehand, while I run a crypto business myself, I told her not to bother with asking me about KatalystCoin other than just the introduction of me as its founder – I dedicate this book to society, country and the world at large, it is my way of returning to society. No attribution is required back to the company I found.

Due to the brevity of the interview I am of course compelled to give summarized version of my answers.

Various examples were mentioned in my interview. Specifically they are on;

1) SIA Blockchain Project– It is in my view that traditionally they already have a loyalty point system. My answer in the interview of course is that there isn’t any point if the points were not meant to be transferable. It only makes sense if the points are used by the rest of the people in the world.

By that I meant that it is used not just merely within SIA but other merchants or users as well. As I understand it, SIA does intend to get affiliated merchants to be part of it but I think the spirit of the matter holds in the context that the points are not transferable by design.

While extending the merchant network for its points to be redeemed does have its benefits but such benefits can be quite marginal (like 20-30% increase to bottomline but in blockchain you should target 1000% increase to bottomline). That is even assuming that merchant adoption has no problem – which I personally think would have challenges.

2) Insurance industry – In the interview, we talked about using Blockchain in the context of insurance industry. My answer in the interview was very short and summary style – i.e. personally I think it bridges no informational gap.

That answer does not do justice to the depth of the answer that should have been answered. There is indeed an informational gap with regards to the market of insurance & reinsurance providers. When informational gaps are bridged via blockchain, insurers and their clients could well benefit from the transparency of information of all the providers of insurance and reinsurance services.

However, in my view, such informational gaps even if present would not be bridged in the short run (like 3-10 years) because in the B2B sector. In the field of reinsurance field and general capital market, they benefit by the opaqueness of information. If they adopt blockchain, they would suffer immediately via the reduction of profits – so they would delay the adoption as much as possible until it is untenable to deny Blockchain.

B2B sectors are generally still impervious to consumer end users tension and pressure and can hold on the fort to delay Blockchain adoption.

Generally, blockchain would revolutionalize those areas that are directly participated by consumers. Where it deals with B2B sectors they would delay the market pressure / tension imposed by Blockchain.

3) Informational gaps– It is in my view that where blockchain makes a difference you have to notice an informational gap. And blockchain is by design targeted to bridge the informational gap, as distributed ledgers with ledger records visible by everyone is something that undeniably bridge the informational gap.

Where there are no informational gaps, or at present unbridgeable, Blockchain would not present any significant increase or improvement to the problem – thereby increasing social wastage.

The examples given were blockchain concerning milk production and also a recently launched blockchain project concerning prepaying of restaurant food vouchers.

Pointless. Improvement marginal, and would have been better done with traditional and conventional IT systems rather than leveraging on buzzwords like Blockchain. To me, that is just to get attention and possibly leverage on some resources that would have been given to you because the buyers do not know better.

Where informational gaps are bridged, the improvement would be tremendous. Bitcoin is one such example. And when information gaps are bridged, very often you would see uncoordinated contribution like from Bitcoin community – they participate by mining which makes the Bitcoin safer.

That said, Bitcoin while a good shiny beacon in the past, is also becoming less and less socially and economically relevant. As there are good replacements of it.